Responses to Conflict and Loss

Featured artists Moira Blackwell, Alexandra Buhl, Graham Carrick, Linda Duong, Sarah Evans, Nathan Horton, Garry Hunter, Matthew Kolakowski, Ellis Leeper, Peter Mackertich, Michael Mayhew, John Perivolaris, Clifton Stewart, Jonathan Turner, David Snoo Wilson, Kazimierz Zakrzewski-Rucinski.

The exhibition is a showcase of work in different media, drawing its inspiration from the widely dispersed geography of 20th Century conflict including reflections from Cambodia, France, Spain, Northern Ireland, Romania and Vietnam.

Sixteen visual artists have been invited to exhibit a range of photographs, video projections, and installations.

In his on-going project Soil Archive, David Snoo Wilson takes soil samples from places where atrocities have been committed and places it in individual containers with grass seed from the same location. The resulting grass explores the physical reality of re-growth in the aftermath of atrocity, and is nurtured in Wilson's studio before being installed and allowed to grow throughout the exhibition.

More personal reflections on loss and conflict include the paraphernalia of Michael Mayhew's live art performances in which the artist's own blood becomes a metaphor for internal conflict centered on a suicide note left by his father in 1978.

Underlining the fact that conflict can also be an individual and internal process Mayhew's Chromosome works, which were made in performative collaboration with New York disco revival band Hercules and Love Affair.

Each of the works one represents a member of the band and its transgender vocalist - the series references the confusions of indeterminate gender identity.

Other artists include Moira Blackwell, whose portraits of seemingly passive elderly residents believe the personal heroism that marked the prime of their lives; and Clifton Stewart, whose macro photographs deal with the blurring of play and conflict, raising the questions What do we see? and Is it real or imaginary?